Because in 99% of positions on its orbit the planet is too faint to be seen. At its closest, the Goblin is 65 times farther from the sun than Earth, or 65 AU. Sheppard is not the only astronomer to propose that a putative planet, called Planet Nine or Planet X, lurks at the dark edge of the solar system. [Full Article...]

The only other female victor is famed historical physicist Marie Curie. "It is also quite delicious that this comes just a few days after certain controversial and misogynistic comments were made at a conference at Cern about women in physics". [Full Article...]

Arthur Ashkin of Bell Laboratories in the United States won half of the prize for inventing "optical tweezers" while Frenchman Gerard Mourou, who also has USA citizenship, and Canada's Donna Strickland shared the other half for work on high-intensity lasers. [Full Article...]

Many flights were canceled at major airports throughout Japan, including Tokyo's Narita and Haneda. Trami was expected to hit Tokyo late Sunday, and slam northern Japan on Monday. The agency said the kind of heavy rain only seen once in half a century has been monitored on the island of Yakushima, in the southern part of Kagoshima Prefecture. [Full Article...]

Rosa has maximum sustained winds of 125 mph and was located about 570 miles southwest of the southern tip of the Baja California Peninsula. From late Friday and into this weekend, clusters of showers and thunderstorms have the potential to bring localised flash flooding to the United States and the British Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico , the Dominican Republic and Haiti. [Full Article...]

In December 2014, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched a spacecraft called Hayabusa2. Hayabusa2 will also be deploying an " impactor " that is supposed to explode over the asteroid's surface to shoot a two-kilo copper object to blast a small crater into the surface. [Full Article...]

The solar-powered rovers' voltage plunged on Ryugu, a sign that they are on the asteroid , said Hayabusa project team spokesman Takashi Kubota. Each rover remains "airborne" for about 15 minutes with each hop, moving approximately 15 meters (~50 feet) each time. [Full Article...]

Rescue teams are on standby in case the whale, which usually lives in the Arctic, gets into danger. Lucy Babey, head of science at Orca, a marine conservation charity, said: "This is the most southerly recording of a beluga in the UK". In 2006, a northern bottle-nosed whale died after stranding itself in the Thames. They range from 13ft (3.9m) to 20ft (6.1m) in length and have distinctive roun... [Full Article...]

ORIGINAL STORY: Tropical Storm Kirk continues to move west through the Atlantic, and forecasters continue to predict it may be in the Caribbean by Thursday morning. Some intensification is possible this weekend, but vertical wind shear may increase next week possibly limiting additional strengthening. "A reduction in speed is likely after 48 hours once Kirk moves south of a large central Atla... [Full Article...]

SpaceX says that only 24 humans have visited the Moon or its orbit in history, with the last one traveling on a 1972 Apollo mission. The man is Yusaku Maezawa , and he's a very, very wealth Japanese man who plans on inviting up to eight others along for the ride around the Moon and back to Earth. [Full Article...]

The spiders are believed to have gathered here due to the rise of the mosquito population. Like this story? Share it with a friend! In what must be an arachnophobe's worst nightmare, video has emerged showing a Greek beach covered in huge spider webs. [Full Article...]

Jordan, of Webster City, has been a Red Cross volunteer since 2014 This will be her fourth national deployment, according to Breitbach. "They're doing everything from sheltering, feeding, planning", Holly Baker of the Red Cross-Chicago said. [Full Article...]

Coast Guard "heroically saved lives" when they rescued the people in the town of Kelly in Bladen County on Thursday night. At least 27 of the deaths happened in North Carolina . The potatoes can be picked by hand, but "we use a plow that flips them out of the ground", he said . "Same levee. Same dams". What have we been doing for two years?. [Full Article...]

Hurricane Florence is still wearing out the Carolinas, where residents have endured an agonizing week of violent winds, torrential rain, widespread flooding, power outages and death. Florence is blamed for at least 37 deaths. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said Thursday that there were 31 storm-related deaths statewide. In South Carolina, floodwaters heavily affected some crops, Agriculture Co... [Full Article...]

The mission, now planned for 2023, will take place on SpaceX's Big Falcon Rocket. One downside is that Musk's Big Falcon Rocket is not yet built. The mission, which is now planned for 2023, will mark the first visit to the Moon by humans since NASA's Apollo 17 landing in 1972. [Full Article...]

Waterkeeper Alliance has conducted overflights at some of the industrial sites and agricultural operations impacted by Florence and is investigating the possible hazards left in the storm's wake. They passed a vehicle buried in floodwaters and called out to see if anyone was in it. "How's it doing?" the president asked after one woman pointed at a house. [Full Article...]

This "first light" science image captures a wealth of stars and other objects, including systems previously known to have exoplanets . Paul Hertz , director of NASA's astrophysics division, said in a statement. The $337 million satellite launched on April 18 atop a Falcon 9 rocket on its way toward what scientists have hailed a 'mission for the ages'. It watches for tiny dips in the brightne... [Full Article...]

The Department of Justice is now investigating Musk's statements, Bloomberg reported , citing anonymous sources. Tesla's stock price rose after Musk's comments, but has since dropped again. According to Bloomberg , the " criminal probe" is in its early stages in the USA attorney's office in the Northern District of California. In an emailed statement, Tesla admits that the Justice Departm... [Full Article...]

Faced with new forecasts that showed a more southerly threat, Georgia's governor joined his counterparts in Virginia and North and SC in declaring a state of emergency, and some residents who had thought they were safely out of range boarded up their homes. [Full Article...]

He is the first to book a trip as a private passenger with the commercial space company for a voyage that hasn't been attempted since NASA's Apollo missions ended in 1972. "If I'm going to go to space, I'd rather go as far as I can", he said. Maezawa made his fortune by building up Start Today, an e-commerce business that includes a popular online clothing site in Japan. [Full Article...]